COSMIC ORIGINS
Documentary narration. Voice under for visuals.
NARRATOR:
This is the story of a small planet in space called Earth.
Today it has mighty oceans; scorched deserts; and frozen wildernesses.
It supports a multitude of diverse creatures, and is home to more than 6 billion people and their technological civilization.
But how did all this come about? Where do we come from?
Until recently, Earth and its lifeforms were a mystery. Like a huge unpainted canvas, little was known about the origin of Earth and its inhabitants.
But today, we have a rough idea of what happened.
It began – with a bang
About 12 billion years ago, scientists think, from a singular explosion, the universe was born. In those first moments, intensely hot hydrogen and helium raced outward – thinning, cooling, and clumping into vast, organized structures.
Within a few billion years, countless galaxies had emerged. Each one containing hundreds of billions of stars – constantly changing in cycles of birth, death and rebirth. In one of these galaxies, about 5 billions years ago, one average-sized star, our sun, captured in its gravitational field the gas and dust that would become 9 planets.
